Divine Path System

Chapter 1767 1767: The Lost Divine Path

"Wait, wait, wait!" Architect raised his hands and proposed to the enraged God Emperor. "If we weaken each other, this bastard wins out. Let's kill him first."

God Emperor's rage quickly cooled down and he turned to Varian. He realized he fell into a trap. Admiration, fear and rage welled inside him against his dear teacher.

Precisely because he understood him so well, he joined hands with an enemy he despised. "You're right. As long as he's alive, he's a danger."

God Emperor and Architect stood together against Varian, the one so weak he could not even breach their defenses, as if he's the greater danger.

"I don't know what my dad was smoking, but Varian, the ultimate variable is one hell of a name." Varian welcomed their attacks with a fearless smile.

God Emperor and Architect struck together.

Boom! Boom!

The balance attacked Varian's mental state, pushing down his will to win and survive, matching it with the will to die.

Varian's defense started to fall as he couldn't give it his all.

Right then, God Emperor's attack struck. It's an attack primarily built from space and time.

If it succeeded, Varian's mind and body would be thrown into two different timelines.

Even if he could quickly recover, it'd be enough time for them to thoroughly kill him.

Varian knew he could not fully stop the attack. So, he created a sword to cut down the flow of time around him.

All that existed was this moment.

There's no future, no past.

The attack arrived and as expected, despite the shield of Hortus, it managed to affect him.

Varian's mind and body were briefly separated, but since the flow of time was cut off, it could not take him anywhere than the present.

He quickly regained the control of his body, just in time to block two incoming attacks.

Boom!

Varian was blasted back and he heard two voices.

'Teacher, we don't have to be like this. Side with me and I'll give you the perfect life you want.

You will be reincarnated and live your life once again. Nothing will happen that night. No fire wolf. No tragedy.

Your family will be intact. You can live with your wives happily in the new universe I create. There will be no restrictions for you. Anything you want, you will get.

No tragedies, no pain, a perfect life.

Imagine it.

A perfect life with only joy and no pain.

I vow on my own ideal that I will follow this through.'

Varian rejected his beloved student's offer without a thought.

'Is that how you view my past, Thoren? No wonder you're such a weakling!

If I kept whining how tragic my past was, I'd have never had this present. I am not here despite my pain, but because of it.

If I never had to face the challenges I faced, I'd have never risen to this height.

Without discomfort, there is no growth. Without growth, there is no journey.

Thoren, I sincerely despise your spineless, pathetic plan!'

God Emperor was shaken and his mind was filled with killing intent.

Architect's proposal also rang in his mind.

'Maybe I will win or this guy will, but not you. It's only a lose-lose. Why don't you side with me?

I will create a world you want. I will resurrect your parents. And I'll make you the god of your own world.

Anything you want, I can grant you!

Use all your vitality and strike this guy with one full strike. I'll take care of the rest.'

Varian laughed. At least God Emperor sounded sincere. But Architect was full of arrogance even at this moment.

'You stupid son of a…'

Architect was also pissed off.

Both of them gave up their plans to use Varian as a useful pawn against the other and intended to kill him first.

Architect raised his hand and the whole universe flashed with a brilliant for a moment.

Half was separated into brilliant green vitality of life and the other half with the intense red of death.

And then, he brought his hand down.

The boundary between life and death was severed!

Half of Varian's body turned 'dead', rapidly decomposing.

God Emperor raised his hand and the long river of time appeared. He clenched his fist and the phantoms of the past forcibly imposed themselves onto the present Varian.

His current half-death state was transmitted to his past selves, weakening them back.

The weakening of the past fed back into the present, turning him faint like a phantom, as if he's about to vanish.

Varian was really at his limit.

As the clock ticked for his final moments, he found out what he'd been searching for all this while.

He wasn't fighting two stronger enemies to just get beaten. He'd been trying to figure out a way to defeat them both.

God Emperor's strength was from all the divine paths he held. A straightforward problem and there weren't any openings he could see.

Architect's edge, on the other hand, came from those materialized laws. In other words, from his control over the universe.

He had to find flaw with the Architect.

But how?

That was the last piece in the puzzle.

"Harmony path." Varian muttered and Architect's face twisted, unlike ever before.

With that reaction, Varian knew he was right!

Who would've thought the greatest mystery of the universe was a question that newbies always asked.

'Space and Time have Gravity. Life and Death have Soul. Why don't Order and Chaos have anything?'

As they grew up, they stopped asking that question. Why would they question the nature of things? It's just how things were.

What else were they gonna do? Call universe imperfect? Or search for a non-existent path? There's nothing to do than accept reality.

Varian too brushed off this question at some point.

But when he was healing himself, he ended up touching that subject again.

The fused slivers of order and chaos could heal his shattered origin.

But the individual slivers of order and chaos could not, no matter how hard he tried.

In other words, they were missing something.

A gap.

What was this gap?

He thought long and hard.

Perhaps Architect applied a 'ban' on the thought itself, so despite being on the verge of getting the answer multiple times, Varian skipped it.

His very perception and thoughts were 'banned' from approaching the truth. But as a high rank 3, he could finally think without those restrictions.

With the final piece in place, the whole puzzle was solved.

He reached the answer from Architect himself.

Architect wasn't a true rank 3.

Just like how Primordial gods weren't really rank 3s. They're just as good as the peak of rank 3 in their own avenues.

Varian had long suspected Architect to be similar. And this battle confirmed it.

He had two powers. The balance scale and his control over the materialized cosmic laws.

The control could be explained by the origin piece he held. But what about this balance scale?

Balance—not equality, but balance—when there's neither too much nor that, when there's a perfect proportion of things so that the desired state can be achieved.

After seeing that weapon, Varian wondered if it's linked to anything he knew.

He quickly eliminated what it didn't belong to. Not to Space and Time. Nor to Life or Death.

What about Order and Chaos? Because Order and Chaos were indeed suspect of strangeness.

They're the only avenue that could affect the origin. The only avenue that didn't have a middle path.

Wait a minute…Balance, Order and Chaos!

Varian renamed the path of balance into Harmony, to fit with the concepts of Order and Chaos.

So, this was the missing piece!

What did the Avenue of Order and Chaos have that the paths of order and chaos did not?

Harmony!

It's not just a middle path, it's also a bridge for the two polar powers—allowing their whole to be greater than their parts.

And this was true for all avenues. The third path improved the two paths!

Soul made life dynamic than fully mechanical. Soul also gave death a new meaning and with reincarnation, it connected life and death.

Gravity was the fusion of space and time, bridging the two together. It's also what kept the universe together and made this creation possible.

Harmony? Harmony was the state where things weren't too rigid nor too chaotic.

Almost all functional things in universe remain in harmony for as long as they work.

A person's body should be in harmony. If it's facing too much order, it wouldn't try anything new. If it's facing too much chaos, the body stops working.

Harmony was this perfect state where new changes were allowed without collapsing the existing state.

"You stole the path of harmony." Varian said with certainty.

"Rather than steal, I'd say I kept it for myself." Architect raised his hand.

The balance scale, no, the scale of harmony revealed its full power.